Flash Fiction – swamp pink

Something Was Wrong With the Administrator

Something was wrong with the new Administrator. Marsha knew this right away. He was a very young man, or perhaps not young; prematurely bald, but with a child’s face; argumentative, but conciliatory; with a Southern accent, but who had been born and lived all his life in New Hampshire. He was a sympathetic and gregarious boss who invited the concerns of his staff,...

Correlation

At dinner, Felix’s mother offers him the ceramic bowl with the green beans, rests her gaze on his face, waiting, as if she has asked him a question, though she hasn’t. A clean, golden line of rage angles down through his guts. He glares at her until she looks away, puts the bowl down, a fucking coward. “School...

THE GRANDFATHER

My grandfather called. We talked about baseball and the upcoming election. He told me about his cataracts and asked what I was up to. Every word he said amazed and unsettled me. You see, my grandfather had been dead for years. I’d never quite gotten over it. I wanted to tell him this, but it seemed inappropriate. I was probably just too scared to say anything. Talk to you later, he said like he always did. Talk to you later, I said. * Soon after, I was getting a chicken salad sandwich...

A History of Deans

January 27, 2026

Dean Powell, fourth grade. He smelled like his mom’s cigarettes. He wore a Silver Bullet Band T-shirt. I remember the picture of a girl straddling a giant bullet, how the boys would gather and stare at the shadow between her legs. We called Dean a perv, called them all pervs, even though we also stared...

Paw

January 27, 2026

After my thirtieth birthday, all I could think about was whether or not I should get a dog. All my friends had moved to New York long ago and I was the only one left in our home city. I didn’t see the allure of moving anywhere else anymore, even though California was burning up someplace new every week. All...

Lisa in the Third Grade

January 27, 2026

We all knew she was different and you would think we would have made fun of her, but that’s not what happened. Instead we all went pretty much out of our way to behave like normal. The teachers, too, didn’t make a big thing out of mispronouncing her name, just asked her what she wanted...

The Call

January 13, 2026

When the call came from her lover, she was not immediately afraid, though her phone rang first thing in the morning, which was unusual but not unheard of, not necessarily consistent with danger, though truthfully, she did not have the experience to say, meaning she could be brave, even if stupidly so, and pick up...

Shit Talk and Bad Luck

January 13, 2026

This paragraph is not about how I keep having the same dream where I’m trying to drive a car from the backseat and can’t reach the wheel or the pedals. But there is something my great aunt, who I never met, said to my grandma. I don’t know if this conversation happened at a family...

Date Night

October 16, 2025

I got to the bar early, so I sat in a back booth, sipping a daiquiri and watching the men who came in. For a long time, I’d stayed off the apps and avoided the bars. I spent my nights alone, drinking tea and watching Mad Men with my cat. Lately, though, I’d felt that...

The Mattress

September 18, 2025

Mrs. Panayiota didn’t know how to get the mattress out of the house. It was November and Platres was empty again, minus some Russians who visited the village on Sundays in their glittering best, posing for photos by the wrought iron fence of her house. On the phone, her kids said the truck driver would...

Pacific

September 16, 2025

He came out to LA to be an actor and ended up a dishwasher, something he’d made peace with by now, having tired of auditioning long ago. It hadn’t been, after all, the reality of acting that had infatuated him. He could see that now. He didn’t want to pretend to be other people, but...

The Scream-Room

August 26, 2025

There’s a room upstairs I could write in. A desk by the window, a little red chair. “It’s perfect,” my husband says, “so long as you remember not to shut the door.” That’s what the owners told us when we moved in. “But why?” I asked, until they showed me. They shut the door. The...